[SciPy-dev] [pymachine] moving code outside the sandbox into scikits ?

[dmitrey]

David Cournapeau wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Following a discussion with my mentor (Jarrod Millman) and Fernando
> Perez, we decided to move most of the code useful for pymachine from
> the scipy.sandbox to scikits.  Before doing so, we would like to
> gather other's opinion.
>
> Why ?
>
> As part of my SoC project, I was planning to move some of the existing
> scipy.sandbox code out of the sandbox (e.g., scipy.sandbox.pyem ->
> scikits.machinelearning.em).  Now we are proposing to move that code into a
> scikits package instead because:
> 1. this would give all the machine learning related code a unified
> home under one common namespace
> 2. some of the code relies on ctypes, which is not allowed in scipy
> 3. some of the code uses matplotlib, which is not allowed in scipy
> 4. the code hasn't been as widely used as other parts of scipy
> 5. this would allow the code to be developed and released on its own
> timeschedule independent of scipy
>
> What ?
>
> The concerned packages are:
>  - scipy.sandbox.pyem
>  - scipy.sandbox.svm
>  - and possibly others (e.g., scipy.sandbox.ga, scipy.sandbox.ann)
> And (just to be clear) scipy.cluster would remain where it is.
>
> Potential problems?
>
> The obvious consequence is that you will now need to install the new
> scikits' package to use the code currently available in the
> scipy.sandbox. As you need to install sandboxed code from the source
> anyway, this shouldn't be too big of a problem.
>
> Also the namespace changes, but that would be true if the code was
> moved out of the sandbox as originally planned.
>
> Better name for pymachine ?
>
> We have been calling the project pymachine. But we would rather use a
> more descriptive name for the scikit package (and one that doesn't
> contain 'py').  Here are some ideas:
> - scikits.learning
> - scikits.learn
> - scikits.machinelearning
> - scikits.mlearn
> What do you think of these names?  Does anyone have better name in mind?
>   
it's too long to type each time "from scikits.machinelearning import (...)"
maybe, machlearn or maclearn or mach_learn or ml?
As for me, I would implement 2 ways of calling each scikits module - one 
long and unique, other small, but also unique.
for example,
1st: from scikits.openopt import (...)
2nd: from scikits.oo import (...) (for those who types it dozens times 
per day, for example module developers itself)
However, I don't know how to do the trick via setuptools, as well as 
supply my py-files installed with their compiled versions (setup.py 
compiles my py-files but (I don't know why) they are absent in 
destination directory) and howto pass "-j 2" option to 'make' routine 
when I call 'python setup.py install' (or maybe parallel compiling 
options should be passed somehow else?)
Thank you in advance for your suggestions,
D.

> If anyone has concerns with the above plan, please speak up!
>
> Cheers,
>
> D. Cournapeau, J. Millman, B. Hawthorne, and F. Perez
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